When Curdle stumbled into opening his eyes, he was not confused to find that he had become she, or that there were warm arms wrapped around her waist and music in the background. A tangle of bright life and loving memories. A skein of story wrapped the wrong way ‘round.  Dreams never cared to concern themselves with what should be, and these were not his besides, but still, he immersed himself in this moment of family and felt love and was loved in turn and that part of him that was trapped enjoyed it, and that part of him that was still beyond her reach yearned for the same. 

S/he wanted this life, grasping at the edges to fold up the image as though it was a quilt they could cover themselves with every evening. Her and Tamal, Mother and Father, music, weaving, laughter, love. Even had he remembered that, awake, he knew none of these people, Curdle would have wished it real. Maybe it was, it felt so sure, for all that same distant part of himself marveled at the heady notion of jinni and human together, in love. In the kitchen, he rejoiced in the familial wealth that abounded here, and did not notice the moment when she turned back and he remained, rooted in the gift she had accidentally given him. 

He didn’t notice when the laughter stopped or when the violin fell silent. He didn’t see the atmosphere’s shift from open and inviting to cold and angry, frightening. But he did hear her wail, the distress sending him staggering as the kitchen walls fell away and the floor gave out beneath him, forcing him back to a scene charged with hate. Oh… how the walls wept red. He forgot his fear of the unknown mind beyond this room and watched as the woman who sold tapestries in the market faced her fear and her love and her hate and could not defeat it. The revelation was too much. 

But layered now over the whole of it was a level of resignation and regret that delved deep in sad recognition of the strange jinni’s broken justification. The moment was lost. He stepped forward, a body materialising of its own volition, wanting to reach past the woman’s frozen form to pull Tamal out of reach of the blood and whatever hurts he had been given to lead him to this madness. But also, out of reach of the woman whose innocence, ignorance if you will, had been sorely abused. Neither should have had to suffer this story, and true or not, he couldn’t have said, but it felt real and that was all that mattered. 

He was too late though, of course he was, years too late in all likelihood, he had no place in the timeline of these dreams. Still, as the jinni charged, a sword leapt to his hand from a scabbard that had not existed before the sword was unsheathed. He would protect the woman, drive her demon away. All he managed, however, was to impede her escape, and he blinked through tears as she fell and Tamal vanished. Everything vanished but the white-washed walls and the lasting effects of traumatic emotions. 

Slowly sheathing the sword, Curdle wiped at his wet cheeks, and struggled to recover from what he had witnessed. With a prouder stance, his chin shaved close and his skin less worn by wind and sun, it might well have been only his light eyes and grey horns(still working on their curl now) that gave him away. Gradually, however, as she stumbled over her recognition and he grew into himself here, where he did not belong, the jinni’s beard and horns grew out and the lines deepened around his eyes until he stood with the slight hunch of a man worn down by time. “I, messi.” His voice cracked in the quiet of her suspicions and he didn’t know how to answer her ragged questions. She’d dreamed him, was dreaming? He’d fallen in. And how did one fall into a dream? Especially when it was not their own. 

“I made a mistake, I think.” In many things, he had been mistaken. In giving up. In leaving behind the urn. In involving her. In being caught in her dreams. In witnessing secrets… “I am sorry.”

He wiped at his eyes, fingers trembling as the dream gave them a weight that didn’t belong, regret clear in his voice and expression, but there was nothing else he could do. Nothing more that he could say, or ask. Nothing, except what he perhaps should have done in the first place. “Very sorry, messi. Please, I am needing your help.”